Before I go, I find myself going through all the papers and taking out what I think would cause first (oh, yes, me first) “an improper impression of my motives and abilities” and secondly (yep, I’m ashamed it’s second) the stuff that would wound. My original objective was to collect material objects that I don’t use and sell them. I never made it past the first stack in the doorway.
So much paper. The fact I’ve carried some of the wounding kind around for as long as I have is a little bit of a shock. Then I think: Wait. The last few years I’ve been looking for some evidence of my own enlightenment, and have come up with a bit of a blank screen. Then. Thank you. Hello. I see the vitriolic blinder-speak leap off the page for the very first time. Good. I’m different. I can’t imagine seeing things the way I did then. My palette now draws from an entirely different range of hues.
You never know when it’s going to come, and you never realize it’s coming all the time anyway.
I did carve a super-8 film editor and place it in the middle of what is becoming a great stack of bizarre tools for sale. But my mind was on the paper. Some of it was simple recycling. Some of it was put right back into the milk crate. Some of it hovered in the air for about two beats longer than it should, so I’m erring on the side of conservation. The rest, well. The rest gets torched. I have two stacks by the door and I’m wondering how I can get out to Ocean Beach before I go.
These are the file folder labels that now mark empty files:
- Correspondence: Charming & Scary
- Correspondence: Unanswered
- Conversations
- More Conversations
- Many More Conversations
- Many Many More Conversations
- More Conversations Than You Can
- Shake A Stick At
- The Lisa Theory
- His Forebearance… His Sufferance
- Things My Mother Told Me Or Perhaps I Told Her
- Things My Father Told Me That I Keep Around To Torture Myself
- The Latest Paper Direct Catalog
I left these in the Ponder Drawer
- Panicked Scribbling: Prior to Therapy Sessions
- Maudlin Scribbling: Using Own Blood for Ink
- Obsessive Scribbling: a la R. Crumb’s Brother
I’m thinking of stopping for hunan on the way out. Cold beers and a small amount of jamesons for further on into the process. A couple palettes from the restaurant supply across the way. Capilene underwear. Kitchen matches and some… accelerant. Set up before sunset, so as to watch the last shift of dog walking.
Next stop, polar flight. Another country. No language. One carry-on. Two pens.
Face still warm from fire.